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Between Shoes and Walls: Reflecting on Ashihara Yoshinobu’s Last Lecture
What makes a space “inside”? Where does “outside” begin? For Yoshinobu Ashihara, these weren’t just architectural questions, but reflections on how human beings dwell, relate, and interpret space. In his 1979 farewell lecture at the University of Tokyo, The Order of Space: Inside and Outside, Ashihara shifts our attention from walls and ceilings to something more intimate: the threshold.
Syuk Bash
Jun 193 min read


Farewell, Peninsular: A Climate Fiction Story Set in Malaysia
What if the Malaysian peninsula began to sink—and no one wanted to admit it? Farewell, Peninsular is a climate fiction novel about silence, collapse, and the people who choose to stay behind. Free eBook for first 100 readers.
Syuk Bash
Jun 102 min read


A City That Keeps Building, Even as the Cradle Grows Quiet
A quiet reflection on Malaysia’s falling birth rate and what it means for the cities we keep building, even as fewer people arrive to live in them.
Syuk Bash
Apr 297 min read


The Way Malaysian Cities Breathes: A Planner’s Digression
This is the first post on Distant Worlds . Which is another way of saying I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing yet. It’s a bit of a soft...
Syuk Bash
Apr 235 min read


Understanding Malaysians: Should we take environmental psychology seriously in designing our cities?
Photograph by Edmund Lou The nature of cities has always been discussed in depth by researchers, professionals and philosophers in the...
Syuk Bash
Apr 13, 20218 min read


Townscape conservation through community participation in Japan
Japanese cities are composed of neighbourhoods that combine like organic cells to form urban organisms that are quite different from most...
Syuk Bash
Feb 15, 20213 min read


The Curious Case of Genius Loci: Phenomenology of Cities
Urbanist may be familiar with the term Genius Loci, the "Soul of the Place", a rather poetic term though the concept itself has been one of the most difficult conundrums faced by urban experts worldwide in determining its meaning and practicality.
Syuk Bash
Jan 15, 20213 min read
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